Fat Girl On A Bar: Two Steps Forward One Step Back

Some days I have to remind myself that even "normal" people have ups and downs.

Trapeze sucked tonight. Not because of anyone in the class or because of the teachers. It was the same group of awesome people. The same amazing teachers. It sucked because of me. I take full responsibility for the shittiness of the evening.

The whole week conspired against me. Things started off fine. I felt motivated to get shit done. Cleaned the house. Wrote an article. Made phone calls. But underlying this was some worry. Worry about my daughter's hip. Worry about my son's weaning from his epilepsy meds. And then the Wellbrutin left my system and things went to hell.

What I thought was a panic attack was actually how I feel when the hyperactivity hits hard. I didn't recognize the feeling because it's been a long time since I felt it. As in since I started taking Wellbrutin. I placed an order for my refill and hit the Y hard. That helped but it still didn't make things totally okay for me.

I debated going to trapeze. I hurt my knee a bit when I hit the Y. I was tired. But I also could feel that skin crawling thing starting to eat at me and I knew I had to do something to work through the itchiness. And I wanted to push the weight of all that worrying off my body. I needed trapeze for the relief it gives me.

I went.

It was a rough night. I felt like I was off for the whole hour. I couldn't get the moves. I felt awkward and weak. I tired to hold onto the small victories. Hey look I managed to do on ab/pull up thing one time. I ALMOST got spear when no one was looking. Look at that my foot touched the bar even if I didn't get up on the bar. Yeah yeah I sort of managed one hip hang without driving the bar into my thigh. But there was so much that just felt like failure. It's been twelve weeks and I can still only hop onto the bar. I'm the only person who still can't do spear. I never managed to go from one hip hang to catcher's hang because I used all my strength to get into the hip hang. By the end of the night, I was covered in sweat  and I ached everywhere but without any feelings of success to go with the pain.

Tonight I almost broke into tears during class. I felt utterly mortified as I told the guest instructor that I felt like a failure and I could hear the tears in my wobbly voice.

"Don't cry" I told myself sternly.

Tonight I just wanted to run from the class. I usually like hanging around and chatting. I tried to fake it, showing everyone the neat video I took of Jude. But it felt stilted. Fake. I just wanted to be alone. I walked home taking the long route so I could have some extra time.

The voices taunted me all through the dark.

"You're such a failure."
"What makes you think you're even remotely good at this thing? Why are you even bothering?"
"Here's another shitty thing you do that you can add to the list of shitty things you do badly."

I started to count my steps. Anything to just quiet them. I wanted to cry but nothing came because I felt a little numb.

I didn't cry until I got home. And then I sobbed. All this work and nothing to show for it, I lamented. My precious beautiful girls all told me about their own moments of feeling this way. H talked to me and hugged me. I felt safe. I felt like I could feel like a failure in my home and not actually be a failure.

The thing is that I think it's going to happen. I'm going to have days when I feel like a failure. I have to learn to roll with those punches. But I also decided it was okay to cry and rage. The frustration is valid. It does suck that you can work out every day, do tons of strength exercises and still not be strong enough to do what others around you are doing. I get the idea that you can't compare yourself to others but I also think that at times it's kind of a pretty normal thing to do.

What I don't think okay is holding onto that feeling. So I cried and I wallowed. I even felt sorry for myself and ate an extra Cadbury egg. I totally forgot all this shit and watched Supernatural.

And now? Well now, I'm like...

"You got what you needed from trapeze tonight."
"You are getting stronger."
"You overcame your fear and did a fucking one hip hang.
"You did some kind of scary ass pull up/ab thing more than one time."
"You totally nailed back float. Again."
"You know how to do candlestick and you like it."

Trapeze is something I love. I also love my class, and I don't want competition to mar how I feel about these women. I realized that part of what drives me to compare myself is that I have this fear that they're going to super out pace me and leave me behind. It's a ridiculous fear of course but that doesn't make any less valid. Tonight I realized I need to let it go. I am lucky enough to have these ladies on the road but really the journey we take is going to look different to each of us. I need to let go that we're going to share everything.

It's okay to have a shitty night. It's also okay to not how to do things. I believe I am going to get there. I believe because I can do shit that I wouldn't have even imagined possible in January.  I never thought it was going to be easy. But that was and is part of the appeal. The work is more important than the designation.